


in the shadow of your heart

by pendules



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dreams, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Not Canon Compliant - The Raven King, Pining, Self-Hatred, Sexual Fantasy, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:26:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7293859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Everyone you love is doomed to suffer, because of you, in spite of you, because of every blasphemous thing you are, and you can't stop it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>You bury it, deep down, with the boy you used to be.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the shadow of your heart

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this in January, so it's not TRK-compliant. Sorry if it feels incomplete. I tried my best to finish it, because unposted fic makes me sad.
> 
> This expands on some of the themes in _[eyes on fire](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5323859)_ and there are some vague references to it, but reading that is not required.
> 
> Please heed the warnings. And yes, there is Kavinsky in this, but I didn't tag Ronan/Kavinsky because their relationship is pretty much as it is in canon.

You're a good-natured boy for the first fifteen years of your life, almost like the brother you plucked out of a dream like a flower. Easy to smile, easy to laugh, easy to trust.

Your hair curls like his does, but he's light the way you could never be. There's a shadow over half your heart. You were born with it, a gift from your father.

(It's where you hide secret things, secret thoughts: things your father shows you in the dead of night, the flutter in your chest when the boy from the bakery smiles at you, the one with the green eyes and the golden-brown curls.)

Your father dies and you shave your hair and you leave your home and your heart is eclipsed.

*

Secrets are all you have room for now.

Adam has a split lip the second time he comes over to Monmouth and you just stare for a moment, feeling something catch in your lungs, before you go back to your room.

He wears his on the outside, because he doesn't have a choice.

You cover up with biting remarks and harsh truths; he does with armour that's falling apart in places, but he patches it up, puts it back together every time, keeps going.

Sometimes he looks at you with steely eyes and you think he's seeing all your cracks too.

*

Declan catches you looking at him one day at school and his expression tenses. It says, _Be careful_ ; it says, _I love you but you can't be this too_ ; it says, _You're going to fuck him up_.

Or maybe that's just what each one of your own heartbeats is saying.

Everyone you love is doomed to suffer, because of you, in spite of you, because of every blasphemous thing you are, and you can't stop it.

You bury it, deep down, with the boy you used to be.

*

(Except: You take him home, and you put the heater on, and you steal glances as he rubs warmth into his hands, still cold in his threadbare, holey gloves, and he licks his chapped lips. Your hands tighten on the steering wheel: because you want to stop him from getting out the car, because you want to draw the slant of his cheekbone, his terse mouth, the bags under his eyes, because you want to _touch_ , achingly, hopelessly.

Except: You watch him in class. You watch him in the corridors. You watch him in the locker room. You go to his swim meets, because you're a masochist, because Gansey drags you along, because he's _breathtaking_. He's sitting in the stands during your tennis matches sometimes, furiously scribbling his homework, looking up every so often, narrow-eyed, like he's always surprised to find you there, and sometimes it just adds more fuel to your fire and sometimes he gets you your ass handed to you and you could swear he's smirking all the way to the car afterwards.

Except: You keep finding excuses to be near him. Because you think he needs it. Because maybe it hurts but it's a better kind of hurt. His smile's worth it, worth the scabs and the bruises and almost being arrested that one time; maybe even worth some of the nightmares. You let yourself fall asleep, nothing but the bright clamor of Adam's surprised laughter and Adam's incredulous, accented voice and Adam's adrenaline-flushed cheeks and _Adam Adam Adam_ in your head, almost keeping the encroaching edges of darkness at bay.

You're doomed, too, it seems. But you always knew that.

Only you're not going to be dragged to hell by monsters of your own creation.

You'll go willingly, blindly, following the tug on the bright, unshadowed ring of your heart when Adam's eyes meet yours. Like a prayer, like an incantation.

You're still a trusting fool, still a naive child.

Love only makes hollow shells of us.)

*

You dream of him touching you. His body against your back, his hands on your hips, his mouth pressed to your shoulder, his thigh between yours.

You dream of his elegant hands wrapped around your bloody, pulsating heart, casting another kind of shadow.

You dream of him walking through your nightmares.

You dream of him always haloed in light, like a beacon.

You dream of him dissolving into smoke when you try to reach him.

You dream of him tracing your tattoo, with his hands, with his lips, with his tongue.

You dream of his hand right over your heart; his ear pressed to your back, listening to every beat.

You dream of closing your eyes before he kisses you so you don't see his face.

You dream of his fingers inside you.

You wake up and come with his name on your lips.

You scrub your skin raw in the shower like you can scrub the shame away, watch it run down the drain.

You wonder if you can tear it out of your body with your own two hands; if you can rip yourself apart and put the pieces back together in a configuration that hurts less; if you can form someone new — someone normal, someone who doesn't destroy everything they want to keep — from the fragments of your bones and flesh and blood.

*

 _Blood._ That's what you remember. The stark, blinding red of it. The smell of it. So thick you could almost taste it on your tongue. Sharp, bitter metal.

It smells like life. There's so much life still inside you, still. Who knew.

You pass out and wake up with bandages on your wrist and Gansey nodding off in the chair next to the bed.

You don't remember the pain, but your secrets are carved into your skin now too.

*

You drink more after that. Sometimes, you just can't bear to be inside after dark, the walls closing in on you, as oppressive as your own skull.

So, you race. So, you drive around all night, all the windows down, the empty, open roads and the expansive sky almost enough to contain everything threatening to burst out of you. So, you end up lying on a pew, staring at the ceiling. The church has always felt bigger than the actual limits of the physical building; it feels like it can diminish any dark feeling or deadly horror you might bring back with you. Like they can't hurt you here; you can't hurt yourself. It's a childish, fanciful belief maybe, but you can sleep here. You can dream.

The baby raven opens her eyes and looks up at you, like Matthew used to when he was a baby, like you're her entire world. You're scared you're going to crush her for a few tentative moments, but you can feel her trust in her small, steady heartbeat; your hands almost shake with the knowledge of their newfound tenderness. You clutch her gently to your chest, feeling your hearts beating in sync.

You almost expected your own not to be there anymore, like you've finally figured out how to dismantle parts of your own anatomy and expose them to the light. 

Rays of the dawning sun stream through the windows and she raises her head out of your cupped hands to let it wash over her tiny, fragile body.

You stroke her feathers and make yourself a promise to never let any harm come to her.

*

Gansey's almost been shot in the fucking head and Adam's going back to get the shit kicked out of him and all that's echoing in your brain is: _doomed doomed doomed._

You already are, so what the fucking hell.

You stop the car; you hit him without thinking about it.

You're still not thinking about anything when you get dragged into the back of a police car. You're not worried. Just — maybe this makes up for it, somehow. _Maybe we're not_ all _doomed._

And then you hear Adam's faint voice and you close your eyes, rest your head against the cool glass. 

You know how hard this must be for him; you know how easy it could've been for him to give up on you. For Gansey to give up on you.

For the first time in a long time, it feels like you still have something to lose. Something you don't want to lose.

*

He's miserable at Monmouth, almost as miserable as you are. You wonder what's worse: never having a real home in the first place or having one you can never go back to.

The apartment's small and shitty and smells like must and old people, but a part of you thinks he could be safe here. And that's enough.

He finds you sprawled on a pew a few weeks after he moves in, Chainsaw watching over you from the rafters.

"Aren't you scared someone's gonna find you passed out in a gutter one day and murder you?"

"She'll peck their fucking eyes out before they get anywhere near me."

He should know better by now; it's not anything outside your own head that you're afraid of.

"Yeah, I believe you. She looks like a terrifying killer beast," he says with a raised eyebrow. He could almost be talking about _you_.

"What are you doing here anyway, Parrish? Midnight confession?" you say, not as scathing as you intended it.

"I saw your car, idiot. Did you actually park it halfway in the gutter?"

You half-shrug.

"Get up," he adds, long-suffering. "Come upstairs before you get kidnapped and I have to explain it to Gansey."

"Sure you want all of _this_ in your shitty apartment?" It's technically still in the church building, and you're usually safe here, but it still feels like a risk with Adam there.

Adam looks like he's considering it for a moment and then he says, "Yeah, on second thought, leave the bird." He's already halfway to the stairs by the time you sit up and throw an insulted glare his way.

Chainsaw lands on your shoulder for a moment and you ruffle her feathers, a silent _See you in the morning_ , before she flies off to investigate the vestry.

*

 _Blood._ Adam's, this time. His face had been stolen and it wasn't because of your unworthiness or guilt. There's something even more sinister than you that has untoward intentions for him. You'd felt a strange kind of kinship with Cabeswater since you first discovered it, found the message in your own writing, not yet written and written a long time ago, and right now, you feel both closer to and more terrified of it than you ever have. Just like you do with Adam. 

You can't muse on what exactly that means for long because the thing that escaped from your head has to be taken care of. 

*

It feels the same. The air, the smell, the light over the fields. 

You hold a baby mouse to your cheek and you remember the first time you held Chainsaw and mistook her for your own thrashing heart. 

Sometimes your heart aches so hard in your own chest, it drowns out the rest of the waking, living world. 

Sometimes you wish you could just be rid of it. Make space for something useful. 

You walk through your childhood home, now a tomb for silent, languishing, immutable sleepers, and you wonder if you belong here too.

*

You toss a flaming bottle through the air and something lightens in your chest.

Maybe burning something down does the trick just as well. Maybe it doesn't fill the deep, dark well of nothingness and silence consuming you from the inside, maybe it doesn't make you alive or real or known to yourself, but maybe it breaks the unbearable quiet for one moment at a time. And as far as you know, any moment might be your last.

*

He's in your dream, uninvited, tainted, _wrong_. It's a different kind of shame — you're not supposed to want Adam because you'll only hurt him more than he already has been, because your love is a disease no one so brave and beautiful should be subjected to, because his love is too precious a resource to waste on a thief like you. You're never going to have him. But maybe you _can_ have K. Maybe he can have _you_. Maybe you're immune to each other's sick, corrupted hearts. Maybe it's what you deserve.

*

Lying in a field with your sweaty skin sticking to the leather car seat and the stale taste of beer in your mouth. Dreaming. Dreaming. Dreaming. Day blends into night, reality blends into unreality. It's different now; you don't care about getting hurt, you don't care if he gets hurt, maybe you don't care if he hurts you. 

Just: _In and out._

A pill on your tongue. Fingertips on your skin. A stolen touch. Icy dread crawling down your spine.

You're not him. You're not your father. _Please let me take it._

You're sitting in a perfectly dreamt Pig and all you think about is: Gansey sitting right next to you in a pew. Right next to you in all the days after what you thought was the end of the world. All you think about is: Your mother saying your name. Her arms around you, gentle and warm, smelling like flowers and home. All you think about is: Adam meeting your gaze. Bright and present and alive. Knowing you should look away but not wanting to with everything you have. All you think about is: Matthew's smile. Almost seeing a reflection of who you were once in it. Like a trick of the light.

You drive away. You think maybe your heart's not beyond repair after all.

*

"I know it was you," he says.

His eyes are fixed on yours, and you almost say, _No, it wasn't me; it was who I used to be_. You almost say, _It was selfish_. You almost say, _You make me feel like the person I was, and I don't deserve it._

You don't need to say anything, though. He can read it all.

*

He's like you. He's nothing like you.

He takes what he wants. All you know is how to give and give and give some more and still end up with nothing.

Nothing but Gansey's disappointment and Adam's cold indifference and your father in a grave, your mother eternally sleeping, your home lost to you.

You don't know how to stop. Prostrating yourself before an empty altar ( _Tell me what I am_ ). Begging for forgiveness in a hospital bed. Asking a dream boy who's but a ghost of his real world counterpart to _Look at me, just look at me._

_I know what you are._

You're not this; you're more than this. You're that kid with the free, loud laugh, the one who used to drive around in the passenger seat of an un-dreamt orange Camaro, the windows rolled down, the summer breeze blowing your hair back; that kid who used to sing songs to his little brother and hold him close during thunderstorms; the kid who knows how to save his family, at least what's left of it; the kid who's in love, with magic and a boy full of magic and bright, sunny days trekking through the green countryside, searching for a miracle.

You tell him _No_ , he can't have you, you're not his. It ends in catastrophe. 

And then he's gone, another casualty. But not one of yours. His own.

*

You dream about his hands.

You dream about kissing them.

You dream him hand lotion that takes eight tries to get right.

You dream him pairs of thick, woolen gloves that you keep in your bag, in your car, in your room, that you mean to give to him, that you don't give to him until he needs them, until he forgets his own, until he asks for them and then reaches over and takes your hand in his between your seats on the drive home.

*

He takes your shirt off and stares and stares at your tattoo before tracing one deliberate finger along a long, twisting vine winding its way diagonally across the expanse of your back.

Then, he turns you around. His pupils are blown dark and wide. His kisses your mouth and you don't close your eyes, you don't blink, you just stare and stare.

He runs his hand from your neck down over your collarbone, rests it right over your breastbone. Then, he removes it, replaces it with his mouth, a kiss right over your heart.

It feels like he's reigniting it. It feels like a new sun being born, like you're holding it between the two of you in both your cupped hands, like a small, tentative flame full of the potential for life.

*

"I want to look at you," he says, the first time he fucks you, two fingers deep inside of you.

You close your eyes for a moment and then open them. You nod at him. His other hand's right over your heart. You don't turn away and he keeps his eyes on yours.


End file.
